Every year I look forward to Alaskan “summers” – not necessarily for the weather, although the few and far between sunny days are glorious, but for the berries.

In the spring every year I go hog wild and prune azalea plants along our property forest and usually end up having a huge bonfire on mother’s day. The azalea look very similar to blueberries but they take over. We survey tape each blueberry we find to help us see them and nurture them to maturity. Doing so we’ve realized our property is abundant in wild blueberry bushes.

This year I spent the spring pruning the plants, since we put in a fence and they will not longer be naturally pruned by as many wild animals that used to nibble them. I’ve been looking forward to this time all year. Our plants were getting loaded. I kept peeking in on them but I decided to take a break and let them ripen since they were *almost* there.

For Mars’ second birthday I planned to make a lemon cake with blueberry frosting. The day of, excited as could be I skipped my happy butt into our woods and poof………no blueberries ANYWHERE. I ended up searching too long and found 2 for each of her year, but I was and am very bummed. I try to stay positive and think, “Ok the birds enjoyed them” I mean, this is what is important sharing food with ALL…but still its tough. We went camping this last weekend and I brought bags to pick berries, and we didn’t bring any home. There’s none in the muskeg by our house. What is happening here?! I try not to be glutinous, however I am very, but I also want to not be so rocked by plans gone awry.

It’s powerful to remind myself, “its not my fault, and it hold no value to my worth” but for some strange reason, if I let myself, I can slip into that thinking very easily from simple small disappointments. I am trying to learn to lean more into these beautiful moments and not thinking about future outcomes but just do things and enjoy it because it is the right thing to do.